ROSCos

Reference library

ROSCo is the abbreviation for Rolling Stock Company.

ROSCos were created in the early 1990s to avoid the need for the relatively short-term franchises to invest in their own rolling stock, with major complications to follow when a franchise changed hands. As an outgoing franchise would no longer need its trains, they would not have been worth more than any asset which is being sold more or less by force -- in other words, little better than scrap value. Leases with ROSCos, on the other hand, could be transferred from old to new franchises.